If you tell a woman a joke and get a blank look, don't immediately despair.

    She's just taking her time to understand it.

    But if the punchline does eventually make her laugh it will be worth the wait.

    Scientists have found that while women are slower than men at getting jokes, they enjoy them more when the penny does drop.

    Research shows that women use their brain more than men to process quips and have less expectation that they will be funny.

    When a joke does hit the right note, however, they derive more pleasure from it.

    Scientists asked ten men and ten women to look at dozens of black and white cartoons and rate them on a 'funniness scale'.

    During the process they underwent sophisticated scans that mapped which parts of their brain were lighting up and timed how long it took them to respond to a joke.

    Although the scans were largely similar, the women tended to use certain parts of their brain more than the men. These included the pre-frontal cortex, which helps us decode language and screen out irrelevancies.

    Researcher Professor Allan Reiss said: "Our findings fit the stereotype of how men and women react to humour. We found greater activity in the pre-frontal cortex in women, indicating women are processing stimuli that involve language areas of the brain.

    "The interpretation of that finding is that women tend to respond more to narrative and wordplay than slapstick."

    Analysis of a 'feelgood' brain region called the nucleus accumbens also revealed that men and women have different attitudes to humour. Professor Reiss, of Stanford University in California, said: "Women appeared to have less expectation of a reward, which in this case was the punchline of the cartoon. So when they got the joke's punchline, they were more pleased about it."

    The funnier the cartoon, the more the women's nucleus accumbens lit up. This was not the case for men, who seemed to expect the cartoons to be funny from the start.

    The women took slightly longer than the men to react to jokes that were funny - but were quicker to spot duds.

    如果你給一位女士講了個(gè)笑話，但得到的只是一個(gè)茫然的眼神，可別失望得太早。

    她只是需要時(shí)間來(lái)領(lǐng)會(huì)。

    但如果你所說(shuō)的笑話最終能博她一笑，那么還是值得一等的。

    科研人員發(fā)現(xiàn)，盡管女性領(lǐng)會(huì)笑話比男性慢半拍，但一旦她們"恍然大悟",會(huì)比男性更享受其中的樂(lè)趣。

    研究表明，女性在理解幽默時(shí)的用腦程度高于男性，同時(shí)她們對(duì)笑料的預(yù)期低于男性。

    但一旦她們發(fā)現(xiàn)笑話的妙處所在，則能從中得到更多的樂(lè)趣。

    研究人員讓十名男性和十名女性看幾十張黑白卡通畫(huà)，并讓他們對(duì)這些畫(huà)進(jìn)行"趣味評(píng)級(jí)".

    在此過(guò)程中，研究人員對(duì)受測(cè)者進(jìn)行了精確的腦部掃描，以繪制出他們大腦的哪些部位被"點(diǎn)亮",并對(duì)他們對(duì)一個(gè)笑話做出反應(yīng)的時(shí)間進(jìn)行了測(cè)定。

    盡管掃描結(jié)果十分類似，但女性使用大腦特定部位的程度超過(guò)男性，其中包括幫助人們分析語(yǔ)言、篩除無(wú)關(guān)信息的大腦前額葉皮層。

    研究人員艾倫？賴斯教授說(shuō)："我們的發(fā)現(xiàn)與男女對(duì)幽默的反應(yīng)模式相吻合。我們發(fā)現(xiàn)，在處理幽默信息時(shí)女性的前額葉皮層更加活躍，這表明女性在處理刺激信息時(shí)使用了大腦的語(yǔ)言功能區(qū)。

    "女性對(duì)故事和文字游戲的反應(yīng)比滑稽劇更強(qiáng)烈可以用來(lái)解釋這一發(fā)現(xiàn)。

    對(duì)被稱為"快樂(lè)感覺(jué)區(qū)"的大腦伏隔核的分析還表明，男性和女性對(duì)于幽默的態(tài)度不同。加州斯坦福大學(xué)的賴斯教授說(shuō)："女性對(duì)于回報(bào)的期待似乎更低，這在試驗(yàn)中相當(dāng)于卡通畫(huà)的笑點(diǎn)。所以當(dāng)女性一旦領(lǐng)會(huì)了其中的妙處，她們會(huì)更享受其中的樂(lè)趣。"

    卡通畫(huà)面越搞笑，女性大腦伏隔核被點(diǎn)亮的部分越多。但男性的情況卻不同，他們似乎從最開(kāi)始就對(duì)卡通畫(huà)的趣味性抱有很大期待。

    女性對(duì)有趣的笑話的反應(yīng)時(shí)間比男性略長(zhǎng)，但卻能更快識(shí)破冷笑話。